House of Jan Długosz

Address:

ul. Kanonicza 25, Kraków

The house comes from the 14th century. It was formed by joining two mediaeval town houses, standing above a man-made offshoot of the Rudawa River, which then flew down today's Podzamcze Street. It once held a public bath supplied by water from Rudawa. Since it was a royal bath, it needn't be associated with numerous mediaeval facilities of the kind that were commonly regarded – sometimes undeservedly – as a "breeding ground of all that is evil". In 1450, the chapter allocated the house to be the apartment of Jan Długosz, the most outstanding of all Polish historians of the Middle Ages. This is where he wrote numerous works, such as the most famous Annals or Chronicles of the Famous Kingdom of Poland, and probably taught the sons of King Casimir IV Jagiellon. In 1454, Długosz, along with his younger brother, whose name was also Jan, added two new wings to the house on the north and west side, with windows overlooking the Wawel Hill and the Vistula River. In the 16th century, the house was transformed into a Renaissance building, with a portal and a stone cornice above it, bearing a timeless Latin inscription that says: Nil est in homine bona mente melius (There is nothing better in man than a just mind). In the second half of the 19th century, the ground-floor corner chamber of the building was home and workshop to the sculptor Franciszek Wyspiański. This is where his son, Stanisław, a great poet, playwright and painter, spent his childhood and school years. In one of his most beautiful poems, he later wrote:

At the foot of Wawel, did father have his workshop:
The huge white room, with high ceiling,
Alive with great throngs of dead figures.
That I used to visit as a young boy – and what I felt,
I trimmed into the shapes of my art.